A communications system serves to transport information among users or among points served by the system. One way to maximize the usefulness of a communications system is to facilitate the establishment of communications among users of the system. As one party seeks to communicate with another party, this may involve assisting in obtaining contact information for a given user or destination, or providing a variety of methods by which communication may be arranged.
For example, in a telephone network, a large proportion of calls are completed by direct dialing from one telephone to another. However, further effectiveness is achieved by the offering of interactive operator services or “enhanced services” to facilitate communications among parties. In some cases, enhanced services may be provided to help a caller by locating a telephone number for a called party or by connecting the caller to the called party. An enhanced service may also allow a caller to exercise a broad range of billing arrangements, such as calling card billing, billing to subscriber account numbers and collect calling.
To access an enhanced service in a telephony network, a caller may dial a telephone number such as ‘0’ for an operator or ‘1-800-COLLECT’(TM) to reach a collect call platform or yet another number to reach a prepaid calling card platform. Through interaction with an automated VRU or a human operator in an enhanced services call processing platform, the caller typically provides information by voice or by in-band DTMF tones to convey the nature of service desired, to specify a called party, and to pass along information relevant to billing and authentication.
The offering of enhanced services is beneficial to a commercial service provider at least because increased call completion leads to increased billable usage of the system. The service provider may also seek to offer differentiating services to attract business or realize an additional revenue by charging fees for the use of such services.
Especially with the advent of newer types of communication, further measures are required to enhance the effectiveness of a communication system as parties seek to communicate with one another. In particular, it is desirable to maximize the ease with which one party is able to communicate with another party through whatever means are available. For a variety of reasons, a called party may not be reachable at a particular telephone number or may simply prefer to engage in other modes of communication rather than by phone.